Abstract
Stemness is now an accepted cause of treatment failure and relapse in cancer patients. Laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma patients face a high recurrence and metastatic disease. Research efforts have focused in recent years on discovering biomarkers of poor prognosis in laryngeal cancer patients. SALL4 is an embryonic stem cell factor which has been reported to be highly expressed; and to play a role in oncogenesis and progression in several malignant tumours. As of yet, the expression of this protein has not been assessed in laryngeal cancer. This study provides evidence of positive expression of this protein in laryngeal cancer cells, with positive correlation in the same tumour cells with a second stemness agent, CD 44. Furthermore, it discusses the shared pathways between the two proteins in EMT, Wnt pathway and stemness phenomenon; and proposes further studies to elucidate the role of this protein in laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma.